Democracy pays a high price for party's control

The ANC's dominance in South Africa is affecting on the political system's efficiency, writes Martin Woollacott.

One answer to the question of why black South Africans voted in such large numbers for the African National Congress in last week's elections is that there was nothing else for which they could vote. Most of the other parties are connected in the mind of black voters with the old days of white rule, are regional, or are minor rivals or allies of the ANC. The real choice is whether or not to support the project with which the ANC is identified, that of upholding the dignity and transforming the prospects of the country's black majority.

South Africa has had a dominant party for more than half a century. The National Party ruled from 1948 to 1994, never seriously threatened by its permitted opponents, and acted at times as if it and the state were interchangeable. Now the political system has a dominant party but is not a one-party state or a dictatorship, it does not rig its elections, and it is not lawless.

But how can democracy function if there is no alternation in power? How can efficiency be achieved if affirmative action brings into public service and business echelons of people who might otherwise not have risen to those positions, setting off a cycle of patronage which cannot then be easily stopped?

How can solidarity be maintained if the luck and wealth of this new class of governmental and economic appointees is not matched by the adequate provision of jobs, housing and education for ordinary folk? How can the need to satisfy the demands of local and international business be reconciled with the need to satisfy the demands of ordinary people for rapid improvement in their circumstances?

Difficulties of this kind are not confined to South Africa, but occur, with variations, in a number of developing societies where a dominant party has emerged for whatever reasons.

In an enlightening collection of essays edited by the South African scholars Hermann Giliomee and Charles Simkins, The Awkward Embrace, they suggest that "a corrupt business-state relationship" might well be the worst danger. "The big business sector" in South Africa, they write, rather bitterly, "is with a few exceptions guided almost completely by short-term calculations. As in the days of apartheid, it is quite comfortable with one-party domination, and ... many of the conglomerates are more interested to curry favour with the dominant party in order to obtain state contracts or concessions."

The internal democracy of the dominant party can be a substitute to some extent for the competition and choice of a multi-party system. But it is an imperfect substitute, even where the party has a record of strong internal debate.

One former ANC minister, interviewed on condition of anonymity not long after his party took power, lamented: "In the old days we came out of meetings, even if we had lost the argument, feeling that we owned the decision that had been made." Now, his implication was that decisions came either from on high, or emerged out of the manoeuvrings of factions.

The study of dominant parties shows that while they might observe democratic rules to a considerable extent, both within their own ranks and towards other parties, their main contribution to democracy comes when they lose their dominance.

This has happened in Taiwan and Mexico, has emphatically not happened in either Malaysia or Singapore, and is a long way off in South Africa.

Mbeki argued at the party's 1995 conference that the ANC could only dissolve after white racial supremacy had been entirely overturned. Then, and only then, could the ANC give birth to the two or three or more parties that potentially exist within it.

Dominant parties generally come apart because they fail to live up to the inclusiveness which is their main claim to legitimacy. Sometimes dominant parties, sensing their moment has passed, deliberately organise an end to their dominance, as in a way the National Party did.

The ANC is surely a force for good in a way the National Party never was, but wisdom lies in the recognition that there will come a time, and there should come a time, when its dominance will have passed into history.